The Orange Meaning
by Daisy Miller
Summary: Hermione was like a fortythree year old woman who was getting ready to settle down with her twenty cats. [Complete]
1. Part I

**A/N:** I've changed the second part of this story (it's slighty more in-character) and broke them into two separate chapters. Enjoy.

_Disclaimer: I don't own the characters; no trademark infringment is intended._

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"The Orange Meaning"

**Orange symbolizes: endurance, vitality, playfulness, creativity**

Orange is a power color, and is one of the healing colors. It is said to increase the craving for food and to stimulate enthusiasm and creativity. People who like orange are usually thoughtful and sincere.

**I (of II)**

A blue bird chirped happily and fluttered throughout the cool morning air. He did a tango with the golden light of the sun and talked happily with a leaf about why the sun was always so harsh on the "little creatures" (the leaf's word, not the bird's). When the leaf started jabbering about the great conspiracy the trees were planning, the bird decided to take a rest on a nearby windowsill.

He landed happily and ruffled his feathers for a minute, trying to look appealing to the young female bird that was pretending not to stare at him. Oh yes, life was going wonderfully for the little bird and nothing could ruin it.

Unless you count the explosion that erupted inside the room where the window that held the windowsill the bird was perched on was built. The eruption was a loud one and caused much disturbance inside the house. It caused a little disturbance inside the bird as well, which resulted in a very messy death.

Inside the house, a voice was shouting shrilly.

"Frederick and George Weasley! What _have _you done?" shouted Mrs. Weasley, barging into their room.

The accused persons were currently covered in purple goo, and thus could not see their mother, nor could they see the rest of their family, who stood behind their mother. Hermione walked forward and peered inside the cauldron that looked suspicious, as if the contents of it had just exploded.

George turned around, wiping the purple goo from his eyes. "We didn't do anything, honest."

Mrs. Weasley clucked her tongue a few times and put her hands on her hips, looking at them skeptically.

George finally noticed Hermione peering inside the cauldron, and he gently pushed her back. "Dangerous," he said laconically; laconically because the purple goo was beginning to drip down his face and into his mouth. He wasn't sure if it was the kind of stuff that was okay to be digesting.

Hermione pressed her lips together. "I don't think they meant for it to explode," she said to Mrs. Weasley. "It looks like it was just a simple pain reliever potion, and they accidentally put in too much rosemary."

Mrs. Weasley eyed her twin sons for a while longer and then left the room, not noticing the look everyone else was giving Hermione.

"What did you do that for Hermione?" asked Ron, suppressing a yawn.

"Why did I do what?" she asked, her hands on her hips, reminding Ron, Fred, George, Ginny, and even Harry of Mrs. Weasley when she was annoyed.

"Why did you make an excuse for them?"

"I wasn't making an excuse, I was telling the truth."

Ron scratched his head, trying to comprehend the idea that Fred and George were innocent, for once. It didn't work and he shrugged, walking off to his room to get some more sleep. Harry followed him, shrugging as well. Ginny wandered off to do whatever it was that young girls do in the morning. Hermione wouldn't really now about that; she had skipped adolescence and went straight to mid-thirties.

"How did you get them?" she asked, shutting their door behind her.

"Get what?" asked Fred, finding a shirt and wiping his face. He threw the shirt over to George.

"Where did you get the Amaranth? It's a very temperamental flower. If the temperature of the salt water was just two degrees off, you could have–"

"Died?" interrupted Fred.

George laughed and took off his shirt, searching around for a clean one. His body was lean, his chest darted with freckles and surprisingly tan. He caught Hermione's eye and noticed that she was fidgeting.

"Uncomfortable?" he asked with a playful smile.

George and Fred had always made her nervous. There was something in their eyes, a glint that she couldn't quite figure out. You couldn't read what they were thinking and Hermione couldn't stand that. She liked to know what was going on around her, but Fred and George were always so secretive. You never knew if they were planning to explode something in you face or hug you.

Now that George was standing in front of her, shirtless, and Fred was staring at her with a lopsided smile, she wasn't sure if she would prefer the hug or the explosion.

"Yes, I'm uncomfortable," she said, her arms over her chest. "That thing could explode any minute now, unless you do something about it."

"What should we do?"

"I don't know," she said, chewing on her bottom lip. "Do you have any hogbean?"

"Yeah," said Fred, rummaging through the closet and producing a bottle of the aforementioned plant.

"Just put in a few leaves," she said, lowering her arms.

Fred did as told and the potion simmered lightly, neutralizing and becoming about as dangerous as water.

"I won't tell your mother, if you give me whatever you have left of the plant."

"We used it all," said George, pulling an orange shirt over his head. Orange clashed horribly with his hair, but the color made him feel calm, and slightly hungry. "Hey you wanna go get something to eat?" he asked Fred.

Fred nodded, changing into a blue shirt. "Are you coming Hermione, dear?" he asked her, holding out his arm.

Hermione frowned, and walked out of the room, ignoring the arm that was proffered to her.

"For some reason I feel she's mad at us, Fred," said George, carefully locking the bedroom door behind him. Fred looked at Hermione's back as she walked down the hallway. Her frizzy curls bounced against her slender back, and then suddenly, she whirled around and the curls were flying in the air.

"Mad? You think I'm mad?" she asked, walking back towards them.

Unbeknownst to all the of them--but knownst to us--Ron, Harry and Ginny were all watching them from Ginny's room.

"Maybe you're just horny," said Fred with a shrug that made Hermione want to chop off his arms so that he wouldn't have enough muscles to move his shoulders in that way.

There were two gasps: one from Hermione and one from Ron.

Ron made to move, but Ginny held him back. "Ginny, I'm not going to let him talk to her like that."

"Like what Ron? She's a big girl. She can handle this on her own."

"Which is why we're spying on them and not just standing there, staring openly at them, right?" asked Harry.

"Exactly," said Ginny, returning her focus to the twins and Hermione.

George was smiling. "She probably can't get Ron to see that she's grown up."

"Actually," said Fred. "He's noticed, but he's too wimpy to do anything about it."

There was something strange in their eyes, underneath the usual twinkle. It made her feel like they knew something she didn't, like she was standing over a trapdoor and it was going to suddenly open up, making her fall down a slide and into patch of ravenous Blast-Ended Skrewts . She was too tired to deal with them this morning; she didn't think she could hold her breath long enough to get down where they liked to swim. So she simply turned around and walked off.

"Looks like we got a dead one," said Fred.

She whirled around again, the burning in the pit of her stomach intensifying, making her think that she might just be horny. "What?"

"Hermione, my dear," said George, all big-brotherly and whatnot. Each put an identical arm around her shoulder, making her feel like she was a little kid that was lost, and Fred and George were the nice, not-weird strangers who were going to be nice to her and then suddenly kidnap her and hold her for ransom. "You may be young in body, but in mind . . . well, you act like you're forty-three, have already been through the mid-life crisis, and is now ready to settle down with your twenty cats."

"I do not," she protested.

"Hermione," said Fred, giving her a friendly pat on her head. "You do."

"It's not like there's anything wrong with that," she said, stubbornly.

George and Fred nodded. "You just keeping think that," they said, sadly.

"Well, then how am I supposed to live? Like you two, blowing things up and nearly getting yourselves killed everyday?"

They shook their heads.

"You have to find a meaning to life, Hermione. So far you've only found the brown one," said George.

"The brown one?"

"The one that's full of books and boring things."

"Just because books are boring to you–"

"They're not boring, per say. I mean, reading can be fun . . . sort of. But don't you ever want to go outside, Hermione?"

"I go outside . . . sometimes."

Fred smiled. "Hermione you need to find another color to live every once in a while."

"Well what color do you suggest I live?" she asked in that tone that made people assume she was prissy.

"Orange," they said.

"And how do I live the 'orange' way of life?" she asked, tiredly.

"Why, it's simple," said George.

"You have to find the Orange Meaning of Life," finished Fred.

"And how do I find the 'Orange Meaning of Life,' hmm?"

"You don't," said George.

"It finds you," said Fred, absentmindedly rubbing her shoulder with his thumb.

Hermione slipped out of their grasp, finding it suddenly too hot in the small hallway. "That's ridiculous," she said.

They smiled. "Exactly," they said, walking away.

Hermione sighed disgustedly–the twins always left her confused–and walked down the hall (in the opposite direction of the twins, of course).


	2. Part II

**A/N:** I've changed the second part of this story (it's slighty more in-character) and broke them into two separate chapters. Enjoy.

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**"The Orange Meaning"**

**II (of II)**

Homework is a dreadful thing. It's a monster, that, if left unchecked, grows larger and larger and larger, until it is eating you alive and swallowing all the fun in life. To Hermione homework was the fun in life, and thus the large, large, large monster never held a threat. That is, until the teachers at Hogwarts had found a new way to feed homework, making it get bigger and bigger, even while caged.

The ugly monster was snarling at Hermione, and finally, she felt like she had had enough. She couldn't keep the monster pacified, couldn't stop it from slobbering over the fun bits of learning, and couldn't pacify it into a gentle sleep.

The library, generally a sanctuary, turned into a prison, with something much worse than Dementors. It had books and confusing words and tongue-twisting spells that made one's eyes hurt just reading them.

Not that Hermione had finally grown tired of doing homework or reading books or living the brown way of life. It had just become physically exhausting, and she felt like she needed a nap, a very long nap . . . outside . . . in the sun . . . underneath that tree, right outside the window she was sitting next to . . . . Her eyes blurred from exhaustion, and she felt a panic welling up inside of her, causing her to remember that she only had a few hours to finish Professor Snape's essay, and McGonagall's essay, and Vector's essay, and . . . .

"Hermione?" asked a familiar voice.

"You okay?" asked the same voice, only it was on the other side of her.

She looked up and saw two identical heads staring down at her. "Fred? George?"

One of them smiled. She decided that it was going to be George. "Let's go outside."

They both picked her up by her arms, each on either side of her, and led her down the hallways, and finally outside, right to that tree that was outside the window she had been sitting next to, back in library, with the monster of homework breathing its rank breath against her side.

They placed her against the tree, her eyelids dropping. One can only run so long from sleep, before sleep catches up. And sleep is a good runner, let me tell you.

One of the them was rubbing her back and the other had his hand on her thigh. She looked up and saw their faces, saw a mole, not a freckle, on George's neck, and she saw their hair, a golden orange in the warm autumn sunlight.

She moved her legs out from underneath her, not caring if she was wearing a skirt (Fred and George didn't mind either). "I really want to finish that essay," she said, more out of habit then out of real protest.

"'Really want to?'" questioned George

"Yes, I really want to."

"Don't you mean, 'need to?'"

She nodded her head, feeling that she really didn't want to bother with words at a time like this. She was forty-three years old and getting ready to live with her twenty cats who were all named after some famous muggle actor.

"Good," they said, leaning back against the tree with her.

Her right hand was entwined with Fred's left hand, and her left hand was entwined with George's right one, and she looked up, noticing that the leaves were turning to a crisp orange. She felt calm and strangely content, like she was lying with her older brothers. Ron and Harry would always be her best friends, but Fred and George were her brothers, looking out for her. Life seemed simple right then, uncomplicated by trivial things such as homework. She could do anything, she realized, seeing the promise of possibilities in the way the wind blew her hair from her face, and cleaned the dirt that homework's grubby hands had soiled her with.

"Is this what the Orange Meaning of Life is?"she asked, looking at sky and wondering why she'd never seen such a lovely shade of blue before.

"Yes Hermione," said George. She felt his chest move with every word and leaned back into him.

"This is it," said Fred. She felt his heartbeat pulsing against her shoulder and his thigh against her own.

She closed her eyes, and she was seeing orange.

_fin.

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_A/N: Hope you enjoyed it. Any comments are welcome. Thanks for reading!_


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